This tutorial provides users with examples to follow while experimenting with Strata. Strata is a stratigraphic modeling package composed of four separate programs: 1) a pre-processor, setbasin, that allows the user to set the model's parameters, 2) a processor, simbasin, that runs the model with the user-defined parameters, 3) a post-processor, plotbasin, that displays the model results, and 4) a special utility, filmbasin, that combines processing and post-processing to make a movie.
Each section of this tutorial discusses the types of depositional environments, sealevel changes, subsidence histories, isostatic properties, heat flow histories, and seismic response predictions that can be simulated with Strata. The examples used in this tutorial should be found in the Simulations directory if you have properly downloaded the Strata code (see Downloading Strata). Throughout each example, reference will be made to the primary controlling parameters (found in setbasin) for the particular example.
At the heart of the simulations is the assumption that sediment transport behaves diffusively (i.e. volumetric flux is proportional to local gradient). For carbonate simulations, the sediment source is proportional to water depth, while for clastic simulations the sediment source is a user-specified function. We strongly recommend that you flip through Jordan and Flemings (1991), Flemings and Jordan (1989), Flemings and Jordan (1990), and Kaufman et al. (1991) to gain a physical insight into this process. The most useful of these for marine simulations will be Jordan and Flemings (1991).
If you need help getting started, the basic instructions for using the four programs that comprise strata are found in the Strata2.1 User Manual. If you are already familiar with strata operations, you may want to follow the example simulations found here in each of the figures.
Annotation in this user manual: